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Pictures and Photographs

The Library has a large number of pictures and photographs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Although many of these photos were taken for a European audience, photographic and picture collections of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are now very useful for tracing family history.

Our catalogue

Try different ways of spelling the names of people, groups or places. Often there are many different ways of spelling the name of an Aboriginal group (eg: Gaagudju is also spelled Gagadju and Gagadyu).

People and places might be known by an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander name, or by a European name.

Many of the photographs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders show people whose names have not been recorded. If you can't find anything through a name search, try searching more broadly; for names of Aboriginal language groups, tribes or peoples (eg: Bundjalung).

Trove

Try searching for pictures and photos on Trove. Trove searches the combined pictures and photograph collections of a large number of libraries, including the National Library and all of the State Libraries, as well as numerous galleries and museums. Via Trove, you can browse over 60,000 catalogue entries for images relating to Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people, places, objects and culture. Many of these images have been digitised and can be viewed online.

State Library of Western Australia Storylines ProjectThe State Library of Western Australia Storylines Project aims to digitally repatriate Library collections to community. The archive contains a large number of images of people, places, objects, and occassional family trees. Some fo the Aboriginal people in the photographs have been identified, however many have not. The State Library of Western Australia is working closely with community to help identify people in photographs.

The Macleay Museum photograph collectionThe Macleay Museum, at Sydney University, has over 10,000 photographs with content relevant to Aboriginal, Torres Strait, and Pacific Islander people. The collection is focussed on Northern Australia, Western Australia and the Pacific, and is not fully itemised or digitised. To arrange access to this collection please contact their curator of ethnography.